As academic coordinators, we are tasked with multiple responsibilities. Helping to negotiate work and preparing to return to the classroom is just one part of the gig. This session seeks to share how academic coordinators fill out the rest of the job. From being the ad hoc clinical support, developing therapeutic report, fostering buy-in, developing trusting relationships with colleagues, and classroom atmosphere, this session aims to inform and empower those who attend.

The Nuances of Academic Case Management for Secondary Academic Coordinators 

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Academic Coordinator Panel

Anxiety’s negative impact on learning, school attendance, and the subsequent development of depression and substance use is well-documented.  In order to effectively support students returning to school after an absence—and to proactively interrupt the cycle of anxiety and depression that leads to absenteeism and isolation—clinicians benefit greatly from accurate information and interventions that focus on skill-building. Though most of us know the obvious signs of anxiety, how it chronically (and perhaps covertly) impacts a student and family is often missed and misunderstood. The solutions offered can feel cliched and ineffective; sadly they often include the very same patterns that escalated the anxiety and depression in the first place.  
 
This workshop will address the skills families need to tackle this problem. How can we think preventatively, knowing that anxious and disconnected students are at high risk? How do schools best collaborate with parents who are often overwhelmed and frustrated? What’s the role of an outside provider, and how can we best communicate? Most importantly, how can we create plans for anxious and depressed students that move them forward, rather than “doing the disorder”?

Skill-Building Strategies for Helping Anxious, Depressed, and Disconnected Students Re-enter School Successfully

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Creating Plans That Work

There has been significant recent development in the Massachusetts community mental health landscape, including the creation of the Roadmap to Behavioral Healthcare Reform. This session will focus on providing information about the Roadmap and more specifically about the Behavioral Health Help Line, the Community Behavioral Health Centers, and Mobile Crisis. In addition to learning more about the systems, the session will help those working in schools better understand how to connect students and families to the supports.

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Understanding the Massachusetts Community Mental Health Landscape

In this session attendees will learn best practices for using SEL, mental health, behavioral, and academic data to monitor student progress, improve counseling practice, and inform adjustments to interventions. Specific measures will be shared to improve data collection and use, and attendees will receive practical resources to support implementation of progress monitoring. Implications for the design of measurable goals for IEP counseling services will also be discussed.

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Using Data to Monitor Student Progress and Design and Inform Counseling Interventions

When young people are overwhelmed by fear and stress, it is nearly impossible for them to learn anything new. In many schools when a child is referred to as “not available for learning,” this is the end of the conversation. But what if instead, we saw it as the beginning for co-regulation techniques and longer-term conversations about increasing the student’s internal and external resources to cope. Using neuroscience, case examples, discussion, and experiential exercises, this workshop introduces school staff to frameworks for thinking about how to use themselves and the environment of the bryt room to help students (and themselves) to be present and fully available for learning.

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Available for Learning

This presentation aims to provide participants with information about common symptoms of psychosis and what kinds of signs to look for to indicate that a young adult may be experiencing psychosis. We will also discuss how to ask and talk about these experiences and identify some common screening strategies that may help with this process. Finally, we will review specialized treatment approaches for early psychosis and discuss a new referral and triage program (Massachusetts Psychosis Access and Triage Hub, or M-PATH) that can help to connect clients, families, and providers to these types of resources.

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Early Psychosis: Symptoms, Identification, and Treatment

This interactive workshop is geared toward bryt staff working in school settings.  The session will begin by reviewing the manifestations of both trauma and emerging mental illness in middle and high school aged adolescents. We will then introduce a workshop format that centers on a family case presentation.  Participants will have the opportunity to explore both caregiver attunement and potential practical intervention as the case moves from initial engagement, the entry meeting, a mid-cycle check-in and finally, the exit meeting.

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Empathic Attunement and Compassionate Interventions with Caregivers of Secondary bryt students

The involvement of state child protective services agencies (CPS) in the lives of students is complex and often associated with trauma for the student as well as for their parent/caregiver. This session will initially explore the overall context of interactions between schools and CPS (with a focus on Massachusetts), including trends in reporting related to race and class and the impact of reporting on families. We will then shift to discussion of how bryt teams in schools can best support students at different points of involvement with the CPS system.

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Supporting Students and Families Involved with CPS in bryt

Sustaining bryt through changing conditions and leaders at the school and district level depends on ensuring that the intervention remains responsive to the needs of students and of the school, along with ensuring that the school and district community understand bryt and its impact, and may also need to include finding the financial resources needed when budget conditions are challenging. During this session we will hear from school- and district-level bryt leaders about how they have worked to sustain bryt over time, as well as about school-based Medicaid as a potential source of financial support for bryt.

Programmatic, Communications, and Financial Considerations

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Sustaining bryt

In this breakout session, Dr. Ablon will help participants practice applying the Collaborative Problem Solving approach in their own work. Participants will practice identifying lagging neurocognitive skills in students that are the root cause of challenging behavior and then using a simple behavior intervention planning process. Finally, participants will learn how to troubleshoot the process of solving problems collaboratively with students.

The Collaborative Problem Solving Approach

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The School Discipline Fix

Challenging behavior is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to mental health challenges, and traditional school discipline, which relies on rewards and consequences to change student behavior, doesn’t work for the students to whom it is most applied and often makes matters worse. This is because a lack of motivation isn’t the cause of challenging behavior in the classroom. Dr. Stuart Ablon explains how student success is determined by skill, not will. This paradigm shift is at the heart of Dr. Ablon’s work and why Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Dan Pink and Susan Cain hand-picked his latest book, Changeable, for their Next Big Idea Club. Dr. Ablon’s evidence-based approach, Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS), combines this shift in thinking with concrete strategies that make trauma-sensitive teaching actionable. CPS has been shown to improve behavior, decrease the need for punitive discipline, build skills, decrease stress and improve relationships between educators and students.

Combining Neuroscience, Compassion and Common Sense

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Students Do Well if They Can

This session will include an overview of the basics of the bryt model intervention, evidence of its success, and how the bryt team helps schools start and continuously improve their bryt interventions. Members of the bryt Network will share their school-specific examples of planning, implementation, and lessons learned along the way. Time will be built in for audience member questions and thoughts as well as identifying next steps.

Planning & Implementation

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Introduction to the bryt Model Intervention

This session aims to explore the unique needs of refugee and immigrant students and how the bryt intervention can best support them. Throughout the session participants will build foundational knowledge on the importance of taking into consideration stressors (acculturation, cultural and linguistic barriers, family systems, health care accessibility, etc.) faced by immigrated students and families in order to best support students during the post-migrated period. As well as reflecting on their role as providers servicing immigrated families and students, participants will leave with the understanding that what we locals might dismiss as a secondary need, such as obtaining a driver's license, is a priority for a migrant student and their family. The bryt intervention can support both students and their families by creating warm and welcoming relationships, culturally responsive clinical interventions, sustainable connections to community services, and academic support. This session will touch upon these topics and more as we hear from panelists about their experiences and best practices.

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Supporting Refugee and Immigrant Students and Families

Have you ever thought to yourself, “bryt would be great at our school, but…” the school is too small, too rural (with few community supports in place), under-resourced in terms of staffing, has too few (but very acute) students, or it has shifting mental health needs?  
This session aims to explore the ways in which individual schools and districts can “flex” the bryt model while maintaining fidelity to its core principles and practices, all while serving kids and families encountering a major mental health disruption and helping your school communities grow stronger.

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Adapting the bryt Model for Different School and Community Contexts

The ACLU reports that they are tracking 374 legislative attempts to quash the rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals. These range from so-called “bathroom bills,” which dictate who can access which public accommodations (bathrooms, lockers), to bills that would limit educators’ rights to choose and expand their curriculum to be LGBTQIA+ inclusive and could force educators to out their students.   The rights of LGBTQIA* students are under significant attack and - regardless of whether a youth lives in one of the six states with over 16 of these bills pending OR the 12 (only) states with none pending - the effect of this on LGBTQIA+ mental health is significant. 

LGBTQIA* youth remain at greater risk for depression, suicide,, substance use, and sexual behaviors that can place them at increased risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than their heterosexual peers. This session will touch on some of the legislation happening around the country but, more importantly, will discuss the impact of these on students and their mental health, including how this translates into school absences and potential bryt involvement. 

Schools, as a microcosm of our society, can perpetuate systemic oppression, discouraging LGBTQIA+ students from attendance and learning, or it can be a place of safety and potential healing. We’ll review concrete ways that you can create an open, welcoming and safe bryt space for diverse students, and the particular importance of family engagement for students exploring their gender and sexual identities.

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